


Scheherazade

by cher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort That Hurts, Healing...Corridors, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Marking and Scarring, Masochist Jonathan Sims, Psychological Horror, Sex with Monsters, Trust Kink, Xeno, mutual obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-20 04:14:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14252814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: Michael, stealing Jon. Jon, stealing Michael.





	Scheherazade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeverwinterThistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/gifts).



It’s been going on for months, and Jon’s—re-wired wrong. Something like that. Too many powers trying to kill him, steal him, change him. Some of them were bound to succeed; that’s how the human psyche works. Stress rewires it. He sleeps with a knife next to his bed, now, and it’s not because he thinks he’s going to be woken by burglars. (He almost certainly _will_ be woken by monsters now and again, but steel won’t help him then, will it.) No, he’s—wrong. This thing has him wrong in the head, and some nights he can’t relax without seeing just a little of his own blood. To check it’s still red. To check that he can still bleed. And, maybe, because that tiny zing of pain is addictive, something totally his own when his life feels like it really isn’t. 

Some nights when he wipes the red beads away, shivering at the sting of the alcohol wipe, he can even forget the constant feeling of his own master watching him. Lately, he imagines an edge of jealousy in its unstoppable gaze. 

*

It started because Michael cut Nikola to hollow plastic pieces with its bare fingers. It didn’t even seem to use its powers. Jon thinks it was too angry to do anything but go for her, and that she was too surprised to fight back at all, because what does the Spiral care for the Beholding’s creature? 

But Michael _does_ , for reasons Jon no longer questions. It turns out that Jon read too many fairy tales as the terrible child he was, and apparently some secret part of himself _really likes_ being a rescued princess. Even when he’s being rescued by a spitting mad eldritch horror that’s mostly angry that someone _else_ hurt its plaything. 

Jon was really very grateful to be rescued, especially since he was being flayed and stabbed at the time. Nikola wanted _his_ skin to wear if he wouldn’t give her the particular one she’d asked for. He suspects that he was probably dying, and he won’t ever be able to win the argument he’s had going with himself since, over whether or not he imagined the details of what came after. He knows for a fact that he was in Michael’s corridors, and he knows for a fact that some time after that he woke up in his own bed, not dead, and with the wounds Nikola had given him healed over with new pink skin, and Michael, as it likes to do, watching him. (And then— )

What he doesn’t know is if he imagined the distressed fretting, and the attempts at petting him, and—most unlikely of all—the apologies. But if Jon _didn’t_ dream the whole thing, then Michael felt some approximation of guilt that Jon had called it and it hadn’t come, and then another power almost killed him. If Jon _did_ create the whole thing in some kind of delirious fever dream, then his subconscious is so starved for affection that he’ll take that of a literal monster. Either possibility disturbed him, at the time. He’s since stopped feeling bothered by it, along with most of the other daily horrors in his life. 

Whatever might have happened—he can’t ask Michael; what would be the point—it is indisputably true that Michael saved his life. It killed the avatar of another power, and it healed Jon. It took him into its corridors, cradled in its leathery, sense-defying arms, and it crooned at him with its weird voice, and he was lost in a haze of pain, fear and confusion. He can never remember very much about being in the corridors, no matter how many times he’s there. It’s all blurry impressions, yellow doors, and Michael’s voice, because he’s never alone there. But this first time, he remembers the pain draining out of him, because it was such a foreign, _inhuman_ feeling. The only way he can describe it to himself is to liken it to a kind of reverse orgasm. 

And then he was awake, in his dusty bed, in the flat he hadn’t seen since everything really started to go sideways. With a monster staring at him, and wounds that not only hadn’t killed him, but looked like they’d healed over days ago. He assumed at first that it actually had been days or weeks since ‘Breekon and Hope’ had abducted him, but when he eventually staggered up and checked his phone and laptop, it was still the same day. 

He still doesn’t know if it’s mostly that time behaves differently in the corridors, or if it’s that whatever Michael does to convince his body that it isn’t injured works that quickly. He sees the yellow doors a lot. They’re where Michael puts him back together every time he’s broken. 

He breaks a lot, these days. After all, if you lay down with monsters, you get up with punctures. 

*

“Michael, no—oh—oh shit—no—that’s too deep, that might actually kill me—Michael—” 

Jon is transfixed, in all senses, because one of Michael’s fingers has actually gone right through his left wrist, and the blood pooling on his sheets is—well, it’s beautiful, but there’s a bit more of it than usual. 

The pain is lovely. The blood is lovely. Michael moving inside him is lovely. But he likes living and there is too much blood. “Michael—focus, please, do you want to keep me?”

Michael makes that sound that can’t be described, that sound that is nothing at all like a purr, but that Jon has long ago decided to understand as one. “Oh, yes, Archivist. I do want to keep you, very much.” It flexes its hands and Jon bites down on a scream. 

“Then—Michael, you need to fix my wrist, there’s too much blood—” The truly fucked up thing, Jon thinks, is that he is still so into this. Here he is, in something like lust with this inhuman monster who flays him open regularly and sometimes doesn’t mean to, and he loves it, loves it. The constant terror is comfortable, by now. 

Michael makes the sound again, and stops moving; how awful. But it notices what its hands are doing at last, and makes another sound, the one that Jon has decided means it is surprised and fascinated by Jon doing the things that human people do. Which is bleeding out, currently. 

“Oh,” it says, in tones of fascination. “That’s more blood than usual, Archivist. Well done, very pretty.”

Jon—look, he’s not proud of himself. He left that behind a long time ago. He laughs, because his monster is sometimes, very occasionally, predictable. “I know, Michael. But that’s too much, you cut something in my wrist that I need, and if you don’t fix it I’m going to pass out and possibly die, and then you can’t make me bleed any more. Fix it, please.”

Michael sighs, and carefully—it does know how to be careful, it just would rather not sometimes—slides its finger out of his wrist. It takes longer than it should. Jon is still hard, and grinds himself down on the mattress, riding the pain. He hates himself, sometimes. Then he’s abruptly falling downward, a fleeting glimpse of a yellow door opening under him in the middle of his bed, Christ. That’s not going to give him nightmares at all, is it. Michael’s still plastered across his back, its cock still shoved right up inside him, but now they’re in its corridors and Jon feels the by-now-familiar sideways blurring of his perception. He’ll be okay, now, for whatever completely bizarre value of okay his life now operates on. He hopes Michael will get him off before he passes out, but he’s not worried about the injury. Not this time, not now he’s here. 

Michael will take care of him. 

*

He actually did pass out this time, whether from the blood loss or whatever Michael had to do convince his body that it wasn’t missing a pint or two of blood and that the integrity of his veins was just fine. Jon stretches and glances at his arm, shivering at the bright new scar there. This is nice, he can see this one whenever he wants, not like most of his marks. 

He’s back in his bed again, and Michael is doing what it does, which is watch him in a manner that he used to find terrifyingly creepy and now finds comforting, and also terrifyingly creepy. Its face takes on the expression Jon understands as a smile. Sometimes, because there’s a lot wrong with him, he likes to imagine the smile is a bit sappy. 

“Hello, Archivist. I’m glad you’re alive. I like having you in my corridors, do you know.”

Jon sighs. “I know, Michael. But I can’t talk to you very well there, and that’s just no fun at all, is it.” It’s important that Michael continues to agree that Jon spending very much time in its corridors isn’t desirable. Of all the terrors in Jon’s life, the idea of Michael deciding one day that it wants to consume Jon after all is high on his list. He trusts it not to actually, seriously hurt him, so long as it continues feeling so possessive of him, but he does worry that one day ‘possessive’ might slide over into ‘possess and consume’. Still, one of the monsters will no doubt do for Jon one day, and perhaps it would be fitting if it were his ‘favourite’ one. 

“No fun at all,” it agrees, smiling in that awful way that means it knows what Jon is thinking, and considers it hilarious. “Can we finish now? I’ll try to remember not to put any parts of myself entirely through you.”

Jon swallows, and nods, and rolls back onto his stomach. The bloodstain on his sheets is unpleasantly cool and tacky when he accidentally touches it. He hopes he has a clean set somewhere. 

*

The first time, Jon almost passed out from terror. 

That was also the time Jon discovered that, apparently, raging terror did not cancel out a raging hard-on, and that he could come his brains out while sobbing in fear. 

Michael loved that. Its delighted, ear-twisting giggle with the echoes of lost space in it hurt his ears at the time, even while the part of Jon that is a prideful man preened at pleasing a partner. The parts concerned with everyday survival despaired. _Having sex with the very pointy monster, excellent idea, Jon._ Michael celebrated by drawing designs on his back. Not all of them scarred. 

*

It makes him reckless, more so than usual. Knowing that Michael will heal him of anything, that its power to fool human senses is so profound as to make his body believe it isn’t injured—well, it doesn’t really matter what happens to him, does it. His monster will watch him suffer and knit his bones, his meat, back together; leave him painted with yet more scars and his own cooling come. His skin is slowly being written over with the Spiral’s fractals, and at least half of the pattern is made up of scars that other powers gave him. He thinks that’s deliberate, that Michael wants to make a point of its interference. 

At the Institute, Elias looks at him tiredly, unable to disapprove. Jon’s learning and witnessing and bloody well _beholding_ enough for ten other Archivists, isn’t he. Hasn’t tried to shut his “master” out, hasn’t scrubbed away the eye motifs that manifest around him. Let it watch, if it likes to see him with his monster. Not as if it can touch him, bleed him like he needs. What good is it to him. 

*

There is something going wrong for him, with him, in him. He knows he’s falling over the edge of humanity a little at a time. He knows enough about what’s coming to want the advantage. That’s probably what all of them thought, all the monsters, before they became what they are. 

*

The first time, he was so surprised to be alive that he wasn’t tracking. Apparently his hindbrain had decided, sometime when his conscious mind was blurred into endless fractals, that Michael wasn’t a threat to his life. His hindbrain is sometimes deeply stupid. 

Michael is staring at him, so close beside him that he can feel the way its presence warps the air around it. Its long blond hair pools on his dusty quilt in distracting patterns. It presses down on the mattress much more heavily than its size suggests it should. Michael is on his bed. He is on his bed, _with Michael_. He would have liked to believe, even for a second, that he might be dreaming but this is just the sort of thing that happens to Jon. 

It changes its expression into its idea of a smile. The edges, as usual, are all wrong. “Oh good,” it says. “I was afraid I might have repaired you wrong. I’ve never done that before. Your insides are quite complicated, did you know?”

He wants to shut his eyes again. Maybe when he opens them, Michael will be gone. He isn’t that lucky. “...yes. Thank you. I’m very grateful for the rescue. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me why?”

It looks...petulant is the word, as ill-fitting as that seems. Put out. “I found I did not like the Stranger touching my things. I thought it might be amusing, you see, to see what would happen to you, but it wasn’t. It was upsetting. Very upsetting.”

“Um,” Jon says, somewhat faintly. “Yes. I found it rather...upsetting myself.”

“Yes, I don’t think many humans enjoy being killed. I’ve noticed that. I didn’t think I would _not_ enjoy watching you be killed, though. I was surprised, Archivist. I may have overreacted a bit. The Stranger is quite put out with me.”

Jon feels the beginnings of a tension headache. “Well, you did cut its avatar up rather suddenly, although I certainly can’t be upset about _that_.”

“It was going to remake you, Archivist. You are mine, _mine_ to remake.” Its eyes seem to spin, portals and fractals and falling forever. Jon wishes he could look away, and can’t. 

His confused body still thinks it should be bleeding, even though he seems to be entirely...repaired, as Michael put it. Its hand with its wrong-sized shadow reaches out, and Jon can’t flinch away. Its eyes hold him fascinated. The fingertips are too sharp and the skin is clammy, thick and somehow both pointed and smooth where it touches his cheek. He exhales shakily. 

This is where a lifelong yearning to just belong somewhere, to really matter to someone, gets him into trouble. His hindbrain is sure the creature won’t hurt him, can’t really muster up the appropriate panic he should be feeling as it—well, as it _strokes his cheek_. Even when he feels his skin part under its hand, a sharp bright slice of pain. It has killed for him, it has saved him and healed him, and deep down where he is forever a weird, unwanted child, that—matters. He swallows. 

“Thank you, for not letting it kill me. And for the…’repair’. I appreciate it. But, um, if you keep cutting me like that you might...need to repair me again?”

“Hmm. I suppose I could. Do you like it, your face?”

Jon shudders. _Does he like his face, Jesus Christ. His **life**._ “I would like to not have scars on my face, yes, if that’s what you’re asking me. Also there are quite a lot of important parts of humans in their heads; you shouldn’t damage them unless you do mean to kill them. Me. Hypothetically.”

Oh, now he’s made Michael laugh. It hurts his ears. 

“You humans are always being upset by your own blood. It’s quite strange; it is only parts of yourself, isn’t it?” 

“Most people don’t like seeing bits of themselves no longer attached to them. In case you’re having ideas.” Jon’s heart picks up speed. The direction of the conversation is deeply unsettling, and Michael’s hand is still stroking his face. No longer cutting him, just watching its own fingers smear Jon’s blood around a bit. 

It takes its hand back, across the distance between them that is only inches but is also an abyss. It licks thoughtfully at its bloody, pointed fingertips, and suddenly, distressingly, humiliatingly, Jon is hard. 

And...naked. Oh God. How had he not noticed the lack of clothing? It makes sense; the last set would have been more blood than cloth. He scrambles to cover himself, but being on top of the bedspread doesn’t provide many options. His face is now on fire with humiliation, as well as bleeding sluggishly. 

Michael makes an interested sound. “That means you want to have sex with me, doesn't it? How fascinating. I’ve never done that before; is it fun?”

Jon presses his face into the dusty quilt in despair. “Yes,” he says, muffled. “If no one bleeds out, yes it is. Bleeding isn’t really part of sex, usually.”

“Mmm, but I like it when you bleed. Would you, a bit? I could lick it? You seem to like that?”

Jon rolls onto his back. Is he really? Is he really considering this? Oh, well. Michael can always ‘repair’ him if it gets too excited. It’s possible Jon is shocky and not making good decisions right now, but...it would be _knowledge_. And that lonely, deep part of him would belong to something. And his dick is hard and it has been a long, long time. 

“Yes,” he hears himself say. “All right. Do you...know how this works? Do you, uh, have compatible parts?”

Michael seems delighted. “Yes,” it says, “But I don’t think you should look. Some parts of me would hurt you to look at, I think.”

But getting fucked with ‘parts that hurt to look at’? Oh, that’s apparently fine. 

It makes his guts twist, that first push of Michael inside him. What Jon will call its cock is vast, opening spaces inside him that weren’t there before. It doesn’t hurt his hole; its’ ‘real’ cock is probably human-sized. But the drape of the wet-leather skin over his back is awful, making him shudder away and push up toward it all at once. His monster is inside him, he’s let it push its cock so far up his ass he doesn’t think he’ll ever get rid of the feeling. Its voice is crooning in his ear again, the way it did when he was injured and it healed him. 

He feels cared for, and profoundly unsafe. 

It touches him with its impossible hands. They cut into his shoulders, his back and he feels it lapping at him, licking at the blood it’s made well up. The cuts hurt, and its tongue is hot and wet. He thought it would be cold, like its skin. It’s so hot it makes him gasp, and the bright, bright pain is clean and new. The realisation that he loves it crashes over him. He’s pushing back onto the cock that’s hollowing out his insides, and the fingers like knives in his skin and the hot, hot tongue running across his split skin and tasting his blood. 

Is this what it meant by remaking him? 

It’s terrifying. He sobs, and sobs, and begs for more of it, and comes suspended there, taken apart and reforming under the monster who saved him. Who damned him. 

*

Jon’s staring down dispassionately at the blood on his left hand, while his right holds his handkerchief to the brand new wound on his throat. It throbs dully, easily ignorable. If he touches his tape recorder he’ll get blood all over it, but he needs to make a statement. 

The Frenzy’s latest crazed psychopath might have landed a good hit or two on him, but now he knows that the Piper isn’t pleased with the Not!Them right now. Maybe it will be important for someone to know that later on. 

Well. It wouldn’t be the first time the recorder has been caught in the crossfire. He clicks it on, leaving a tacky red print for Martin to work himself up over. He records his notes, feeling his master’s eye on him, tingling with anticipation for the moment when Michael comes to get him and his master fades. He wishes, idly, that he could feel when the Spiral is close, but he can’t. The problem with other dimensions, most likely. 

The blood soaks the handkerchief. He feels lightheaded. “Michael?” he calls, but there’s nothing. One of those days, then. He sighs and starts walking back to the nearest station, and at the point when he’s starting to weave a bit but hasn’t yet begun to stagger, a door closes in an alley behind him and very heavy, familiar footsteps fall in beside him. 

The shadow that stretches in front of them is all wrong, all hand, all sharpness and spinning light even in the darkness. His own shadow seems somehow sharper as well. It does that, lately. Their shadows should actually be behind them, but Michael dislikes laws of physics on general principle. Laws in general, actually, now he thinks of it. 

“Come here often?” says Michael, delighted with itself as always. It doesn’t seem to expect an answer. 

“Very funny,” Jon says wearily, wishing he could reach out, but his hands are occupied between the tape recorder and the unpleasantly wet cloth at his throat. He’s come to find Michael’s damp-leather skin a comfort, through repeated conditioning. This is the thing that will put him back together again, even if it will take him apart all over again right afterward. The surety is soothing.

“That one looks nasty,” says Michael, peering closely at Jon’s throat and also not seeming to turn its head at all. Jon’s eyes ache in that way they do when Michael’s disrespect for physics is especially blatant. The feeling will pass. 

“Yes, yes,” says Jon, “missed most of the important bits or I wouldn’t be walking; such pretty blood, I _know_. Can we go?” 

*

Jon has a private, horrible theory he’s working on. If Michael used to be Gertrude’s assistant—the one that sounded so painfully like Martin, all awkward puppyish desire to please the Archivist—or was even some kind of template for the Distortion to build itself a human mask from, then maybe the Michael he knows still has some kind of leftover compulsion to preserve him. Some bit of the Beholding’s weird, awful gees, that looks more and more like it...compels and molds the same essential shape of an Archive team together, over and over again. 

He wonders if worrying over the state of a monster’s free will is a good sign or a bad one. He suspects he focuses on that rather than the idea that his team maybe aren’t even really themselves, because the Beholding compelling essential personality change is so horrifying he can’t even consider it. 

His barometer for horrifying is, like a lot of things about him, probably broken.

*

He used to like risky sex, back in his college days. It got him through his exams, when he couldn’t stop long enough to sleep. But this, this thing—well, letting a monster fuck him is sort of the epitome of ‘risky sex’, isn’t it. 

He knows it’s changing him. He knows, every time he chooses to spend his time in Michael’s company, that he’s falling just a bit more out of step with the normal order of his world. 

Lately, if he tries, he can see around blind corners.


End file.
